transformers (the US movie)

I watched Transformers this weekend on DVD.

I've got to say that, in all honesty, it was not as bad as I feared it was going to be. In fact, it was actually kinda good.

Which isn't to say it didn't have its problems.

It was far too long, was the main problem - well over two hours. Now, I've said before that I'm not a big fan of films running on for two hours. It smacks of over-indulgence, and I'd say that was the problem here too.

There was just slightly too much of everything. Slightly too much Sam Witwicky being all nerdy, slightly too much of the secret government organisation thing, slightly too much of the US military stuff, slightly too much hackering, slightly too much of the Autobots hiding scene, slightly too much transformers combat... you get the idea. If they'd have cut about 1 scene each of those, or axed some elements all together it would have been better, I think.

Not that any of them were fundamentally bad, you understand, just they went on a bit long.

Also, Megatron, who's meant to be the ultimate bad-guy in Transformers, seemed distinctly unthreatening. Partly that was because he wasn't in it until near the very end, partly they didn't big him up enough, focusing too much on the McGuffin, and also he didn't really do anything hugely evil.

I mean, he did - he ripped one of the Autobots (Jazz) in two, but I dunno, it was done in long shot and just sort of happened. It didn't feel evil. Maybe that was because Jazz was a bit-player. Maybe if he'd pulled Bumblebee's legs off it would have been better, because we cared more about Bumblebee.

Anyway, the biggest surprise for me was that in the end I didn't care about all the buggering about they did with the transformers "lore". One of the most obvious changes was that they changed what a lot of the characters transformed into, most apparently with Bumblebee.

I mean, Bumblebee is named because he changes into a VW Beetle or "Bug". But actually, I found that didn't really bother me in the end. Plus some of the changes were logical, because the toys never made sense. For example, Soundwave was a tape player that changed into a huge robot and Megatron was a handgun.

You can do that sort of thing with a toy or in a cartoon, but you can't justify taking a tiny tape machine and just expanding up a million times - it would look silly. So I can understand those changes.

They also ditched the origin story. Again, I can understand this, to some extent, though it seemed less for practical reasons. Although part of me was glad - the problem with comic book adaptations is they often end up fudged. Although I often prefer the comic origins, I think it's better when they adapt them to give the films their own separate origins. It's better, I think, if they have an "alternate universe" approach.

Plus here, they actually focused on the human characters anyway. The film was actually about Sam and Megan Fox's character (can't remember her character name, but she is totally hot) falling in love, more than it was big robots pounding each other in the face.

So overall, it kinda worked.

The only other thing I'd say is it was kinda difficult to see what was going on. This film is the first I've ever seen where you need to go high-def to watch it, I think. The amount of detail in the characters means I think you'd really benefit from the extra clarity of blue ray.